You’re Better Than You Think: Tips to Overcome Imposter Syndrome at Work

Debbie has been lucky. Or so she thinks. How else can she explain her many successes and promotions at work? It certainly doesn’t have anything to her hard work and skill development, or the relationships that she’s carefully built over the years, does it?

Of course, it does. But you’d be shocked to learn how many Debbies are out there, ascribing their successes to good fortune and their failures to their self-perception of inadequacy. Each raise, promotion or accolade is accompanied by the dread that, one day, their cover will be blown, and everyone will find out that they’ve just been getting lucky time and again.

What Debbie and many others suffer from is an unhealthy dose of impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome occurs when you believe your inner critic when it tells you that you’ve only succeeded due to luck, and not because of your talent or qualifications.

Becoming the New Sales Boss

New sales leaders face a unique challenge. They rise from the ranks of top salespeople — the ones making the sales — to then be the one who must coach others to close more sales. They also pivot from being part of a group — often having five to 50 peers — to a more rarified air with fewer peers and no same-level colleagues to lean on.

Often, this shift occurs with little-to-no formal training, with the only insight on proper protocol being that which the previous leader did or failed to do. From metrics to staffing to accountability, the upwards move to sales leader is unlike anything these sales professionals have ever done.

You say it, but do they understand it?

Yesterday, as I was getting my skis 🎿 on, an instructor tells me "TGIF!"

But he didn't mean THAT #tgif.

He was telling me, "Toes Go In First." 💡

But that wasn't what I heard.

And for a Sunday, his #fridaytalk sounded strange.

Doing For Maximal Productivity

It is critical that you go all in on specific tasks and avoid multitasking like the plague. Multitasking has become popular with those who see it as a way to kill multiple birds simultaneously. For example, we try to return calls or listen to messages while reviewing and editing reports. Research has clearly shown that not only do you get less done than you might think, the divergence of mental focus will often lead to poorer job performance and a feeling from others that you’re not sufficiently focused.

To help my clients address this important issue, I have divided the path to increased productivity into 5 steps:

Sharing For Maximal Productivity

Workplace productivity is a huge challenge for nearly every company, business and organization. Leaders struggle to get their own work done (and do the RIGHT work,) while also guiding, empowering and motivating their people to achieve maximal productivity. While the projections vary, estimates suggest that businesses worldwide lose hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars annually due to underproduction.

To help my clients address this important issue, I have divided the path to increased productivity into 5 steps:

Get Your People Out of Their Caves

Your people are living in a cave and it's your job to get them out of it.

Oftentimes leaders don't even realize that their people are showing up every day and they’re just doing their thing.

They don't have the time, the bandwidth, the interest to learn new things, like he innovations, the creativity, the change, that's happening in the world around them.

They're totally clueless.

They have no sense, no idea whatsoever.

You, as leader, need to be providing consistent information, ideas, skills, tools and techniques, to help them grow and to go beyond the cave in which they live.

Moving From Resolution to Achievement: 8 Tips for Making Your New Year’s Commitments Stick

If you are like most people, you will take some time on New Year’s Day to reflect on the outgoing year and set some resolutions for the year ahead.

Maybe you’ll decide to make a lifestyle change, such as eating healthier and exercising more.

Perhaps you’ll determine that it is time for more work-life balance or to travel more often.

You may set some business-related goals, such as making more sales calls or taking other action steps that will improve your bottom line.

These, or any other constructive goals, are the first step in living a better, more fulfilled life.

Stop beating yourself up! 😞

We all have lots of decisions to make. 🤔

Some of them in retrospect don't look so good. 😡

But whatever happened, it's already over.

We need to learn to let things go and allow ourselves the space to move forward, find solutions and live our lives moving on to the fullest.

Give yourself permission to make mistakes.

Leading Against All Odds

As leaders, we often face circumstances, such as market conditions, lack of funding, or the absence of internal support, that threaten to derail us. We want to persist anyway but recognize the uphill challenges that we will be facing under such circumstances.

What can leaders do inspire themselves and their people to persevere with their dreams when the odds are stacked against them?

Get a heavy dose of cold water – Leaders who want to succeed when others tell them that success isn’t possible would do well to begin with some honest soul searching. What are the challenges that everyone is talking about? Why are so many predicting your failure? Am I personally biased or do I really have something special here? If, despite their contrarian arguments you feel that your the goal is attainable and you can win, then go for it with everything that you’ve got.

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